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Writer's pictureShelley Iverson

Why is it taking so long for my Google Ads to show results?

Updated: 7 days ago




If you’re just starting out with Google Ads, you might be wondering how long it takes for your ads to start working effectively. However, there’s no simple answer to this question. While Google Ads is a powerful marketing tool, it does require some time and patience to see results. Let’s take a closer look at how long you should test your new ad campaign before deciding whether or not it’s effective.


How long does it take for Google Ads to work?


It's important to note that the time it takes to see results from a Google Ads campaign can vary depending on the business. On average, it takes at least three months for a campaign to fully mature. Developing a solid Pay Per Click (PPC) Google Ads campaign can take even longer, usually between 6 and 12 months.


However, this timeline can vary depending on various factors, such as the type of small business, business location, goals, competitiveness, and search volume of the keywords. Some industries may see results faster than others.


For instance, small businesses in professional services, retail, or trade industries may see results much faster. In most cases, within the first week, most advertisers will start seeing an influx of new potential customers. Within the first two weeks, the learning process is finished, and the hard work is beginning to pay off.


The reason it takes a while for Google Ads to work is that Google needs enough time to collect data and find the most effective way to serve your ad to the right audience.


Here is Google Ad Process:


Step 1: Get Through the Learning Phase When you first sign up for a Google Ads account, it will usually take 24 to 48 hours for Google to review and approve your new account. Once your account is approved, Google will spend another seven days in a “learning phase.” During this time, Google will learn about your desired topic, collect important data about your business, and study your target audience. This process can take longer depending on how complex your audience is or how big your business is.


What to Do? During this time, you will only receive a small portion of your desired clicks and impressions from your daily budget. Google won't spend your entire budget right away. Ideally, you can expect a handful of clicks per day per ad group. If you aren't getting this number, you might want to revisit your campaign setup and budget. Otherwise, simply let Google do its job.


Step 2: Optimize Your Campaign After the first week, Google will continue running your ads and gathering important data. However, don’t expect leads to start flooding in as soon as the first seven days are up. Usually, it takes around 90 days for Google Ads campaigns to pick up momentum.


What to Do? During the first few weeks of your ad campaign, try not to make too many changes. You want to allow Google to gather as much data as possible without having to enter the learning phase again every time you update your account.


However, small changes to keywords, ads, or ad groups don’t usually trigger a learning period. So, you can spend the next couple of months making optimization changes to things like target audiences, target keywords, negative keywords, location, and ad copy.


Why Wait 90 Days? Depending on how big your optimization change was, you will need to wait a few weeks for enough data to process and determine how the change has impacted the campaign. This process of optimizing and re-optimizing your Google Ad campaign, as well as the wait time required for Google to adjust to each new change, usually adds up to around three months in length.


Of course, this duration can vary depending on the type of ad you are running, your keywords, target audience, and more. However, the main point is to provide Google Ads with sufficient time to run and optimize before making significant adjustments that can trigger the learning phase.


Step 3: Grow Your Results After all the hard work and optimizations to your ad campaign, you will finally start seeing results after approximately three months. What to Do? Once you find your ideal advertisement strategy, it’s time to implement it on a larger scale. If you like the results of your optimized campaign, consider investing additional resources into it in order to reach more potential customers and achieve long-term success. On the other hand, if you aren’t too happy with the results produced by your ad campaign, now is the time to revisit it and make more significant changes. If you aren’t doing so by now, consider using hiring our company to effectively power up your success and increase return on ad spend.


What Types of Changes Can Trigger the Learning Period?


While changes to keywords, ad copy, target audiences, or geographic location do not usually trigger the learning phase, significant changes to your campaign structure, such as a complete overhaul of your ad groups, campaigns, or landing pages can trigger the learning phase and require additional time for Google to optimize.


Anything that alters the intended outcome or significantly alters the structure of the assignment—this includes:

·      Putting in place a new smart bidding strategy

·      Change the bid strategy’s settings.

·      A 20 percent or greater budget change

·      An alteration to the conversion setup or conversion tracking setup

·      Significant structural change


Contact us for more information and speak to an expert about your Google Ads ads now.



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